15 Chattering Chimes \\ Brent Marshall

Subtle sound art that plays with city space and one of Kitchener’s iconic structures.

Like the children’s game Broken Telephone, Chattering Chimes sends messages into the ether to see how their tones and intensities change as they go. Small boxes, similar to wind chimes, are installed overhead on urban trees and other parts of the built environment. Each chime is programmed to tap out a specific note, which resonates and is picked up by the next one within range, which stores and repeats the pattern. Participants send a signal by pressing a button at the base of the first chime in the sequence.

Tuning each chime to a note in the pentatonic scale and programming its neighbours to listen for that frequency will create a perpetually changing tune that can only be heard by following it on foot. Festival-goers are invited to sonically trace the network and explore its unpredictably changing or degrading messages. These glitches and distorted messages ultimately create a performance of strangely beautiful minimalist concrete poetry.

Chattering Chimes is collaborative and ingenious experiment that is being developed and produced for #NightShift16 by Brent Marshall (with help from David Jensenius).